Mouse microbes may make scientific studies harder to replicate

21/08/2016

Science Magazine history pointing to a very interesting lab history raising important concers about reproductibility of experimental results when they involve mice. When lab mice are used it is supossed that they are identical whe you are using same strain and even same vendor. But, are their microbiomes identical? It seems that not.

Thus, it seem that, at least for many studies , analysis of the microbiome of mice involved in the study should be considered.

In summary, in addition to the vast applications of microbiome studies we have another one: the control of the microbiome of the mice of a study to see if microbiome differences could explain not reproducible results. This is specially important if the animals are being used for immunological studies or even more if they are going to be considered as models of human intestinal infections.